Trusted Adelanto medical marijuana adviser now potential liability

Saturday

Apr 8, 2017 at 11:08 AMApr 8, 2017 at 5:14 PM

For the top two leaders on the Council, Salazar's dip outside the city's orbit was simply the result of him being overzealous and seeking control of an industry that developed slower than he might have liked.

Shea Johnson Staff Writer @DP_Shea

ADELANTO — Last fall, Mayor Rich Kerr attended what would be the first in a series of grand openings to follow in coming months. But Kerr said something didn't feel right about this one, and he recalled uttering a phrase similar to: "Oh crap, we screwed up."

On Bartlett Avenue, Johnny Salazar, a long-time medical marijuana advocate and champion for the city's burgeoning new industry, was celebrating day one of his medical cannabis dispensary and, naturally, invited the city's most visible policymaker.

But within a month, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputies raided the store with guns drawn and the bold, illegal endeavor was crushed on the runway.

At one time, as Adelanto leaders began to broach commercial medical pot as a viable enterprise in early 2013, Salazar was seen as the go-to expert — a serial dispensary entrepreneur seemingly impervious to fatigue after years of playing cat-and-mouse with law enforcement.

In fact, Salazar had acted as an informal adviser to the City Council in the early stages of developing Adelanto's ordinance on cannabis cultivation prior to launching his 14th pot shop in the High Desert.

But after the Bartlett location shut down, the relationship between Salazar and the city he often described in affectionate terms appeared to deteriorate, shifting Salazar from confidant to potential liability.

While Salazar used to regularly attend Council meetings, he's been mostly absent this year and he's conditionally barred by restraining order from outright contacting City Clerk Cindy Herrera, a former city manager who's known Salazar for years, according to court records in February and March.

He denied lobbying threats and claimed the order derived from a letter he read in front of the dais Jan. 11, in which he criticized Herrera for treating him like "an outcast."

In that same oration, he alleged he dropped $28,000 in cash on Herrera's desk as part of a "pay-to-play" agreement, where a former store on Highway 395 would have been left unbothered in exchange for fines viewed as revenue.

City spokesman Michael Stevens corroborated that Salazar did bring a bag of cash, but said he didn't deposit it with Herrera. Instead, she directed him to pay fines, which were about $12,000, to a cashier.

"The city denies, and no evidence has even been brought forth to support Mr. Salazar's claim, that 'if fines were paid he would be shielded from enforcement,'" Stevens said.

Where Salazar was once close with city officials, he has since claimed that Kerr and Mayor Pro Tem Jermaine Wright also were complicit in vowing to shield his Bartlett store from enforcement — a suggestion both officials adamantly denied.

For the top two leaders on the Council, Salazar's dip outside the city's orbit was simply the result of him being overzealous and seeking control of an industry that developed slower than he might have liked. Yet both said they don't reciprocate Salazar's hard feelings, while Kerr acknowledged the credit for his decision to educate himself on the start-up enterprise belongs at least partly to Salazar.

"He was one of the main reasons, if not the main reason, I did," Kerr said.

Salazar was a no-show at a February hearing during a regular Council meeting where the city prosecutor laid out evidence to show that Salazar had fraudulently acquired the business license for "wholesale medical marijuana" by reneging on written promises to open merely an information center with accessory sales only, and not to sell the product itself.

Dispensaries in Adelanto remain illegal even as the ban seems likely to be lifted in the near future.

"Within days of getting his business license, he clearly and openly publicly admitted that he was operating a medical marijuana dispensary," said James McKinnon, the city's prosecutor. "The facts suggest that all along he had planned to operate this as a dispensary."

Kerr said he initially believed the city's business license contractor had erred in not applying stipulations to the license Salazar held at his shop, acknowledging that a "laymen" could conclude "it's OK (to sell pot) because he has a license from the city saying he can."

Much later, Kerr and Wright said, they were provided by city officials with a more detailed license that spelled out the restrictions.

But both also said the confusion never affected their expectations for the store. When Kerr and a code enforcement officer met with Salazar a week before the grand opening, Kerr was clear: "Under no circumstances are you to sell pot. If you sell pot, we're shutting you down."

Wright agreed with the sentiment and chalked up any appearance of complicity — most obvious, the fact Wright donated a refrigerator to the store — to being duped.

"He told me (the refrigerator) was going to be for giving juices and things out to the community," Wright said, denying it had been known to be for marijuana brownies. Then, when Wright learned the store was selling pot to patients: "I told him he needs to stop."

Yet in several conversations since January, Salazar remains undeterred in his new quest, not unlike the course he charted in driving "medicine for the people" into city limits. But this time, he has vowed to expose an industry he claims has been corroded and perverted, starting with officials at the top.

"As hard as I (expletive) worked to save my hometown, and as much effort — all the personal sacrifice and diligent work," Salazar lamented, "and this is how my hometown treats me?"

He has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of operating an illegal dispensary in a case that is expected for trial as early as Monday, court records show.

And he insisted he wants a trial, claiming he even turned down a plea bargain that would have resulted in a $1,000 fine and three years probation.

"The reason I turned that down," he said, "is so I can show the corruption that's been done in my hometown."

Corrections: This story was updated April 11 & April 17 to correct the amount of fines in which the city says Salazar paid and to clarify the nature of the restraining order. He paid $7,700 on Oct. 26, 2015 and $4,174 on Jan. 4, 2016, not "about $4,100." The restraining order filed on behalf of the city clerk conditionally bars Salazar from directly contacting the clerk, but does not ban Salazar from council meetings.

Shea Johnson can be reached at 760-955-5368 or SJohnson@VVDailyPress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DP_Shea.

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